Monday, 31 March 2014

Barack Obama’s response to public criticism on the US trade deals with Europe and Asia-Pacific is less than convincing.

UNITED States President Barack Obama will soon be making a trip to
Asian countries, including Malaysia. The Trans Pacific Partnership
Agreement (TPPA) will
be on his agenda, just as the Trans­atlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership (TTIP) was
a priority during his trip to Europe last week.

The TTIP is the agreement the US and European Union are negotiating — a counter­part to the TPPA that the US is negotiating
with 11 Asian and Pacific countries, including Malaysia.

At a live-TV press conference in the Netherlands, Obama responded to strong
public criticism against the TTIP and TTPA.

There is no point worrying about the provisions having effects on
consumer and environmental protection until the deal is done, he said.
Consumer and environmental protection would in fact be strengthened by
trade deals.

“I spent my whole political life fighting for consumer protection,” he said, adding there
is no ground for worries that companies can take action to weaken consumer and environmental protection.

The President’s comments on the TTIP presumably apply also to the
TPPA since both contain similar provisions, and the criticisms from US
and other lawmakers and NGOs also apply to both. Consumer and health
groups have indeed been vocal in their criticisms and protests against
the TPPA and TTIP.

They include Public Citizen, an organisation of America’s leading
consumer advocate Ralph Nader, and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the
Nobel Prize winning medical group.

In Malaysia, groups representing consumers, patients, health and the
environment, including the Consumers Association of Penang, Malaysian
Council for Tobacco Cont­rol, the Malaysian Aids Council and several
patients’ organisations, have been actively campaigning against the
TPPA.

Obama’s response will not assure the critics. His first point, that
there is no point worrying until the deal is done, will hit a raw nerve.

Lawmakers, including in the US Congress, and NGOs in countries
involved in the two trade deals, have been disgruntled that the talks
are held in secret and that they don’t have access to the texts.

The secrecy of the negotiations, the inability of the public to give feedback, and the lack
of legitimacy of the process, is one of the maj­­or criticisms against these two trade deals.

Nevertheless, there is enough information, from leaked chapters, and
from provisions in existing US free trade agreements, for the public to
have a good idea what the trade deals entail. Obama’s advice that there
is no point worrying until the final texts are revealed is likely to
earn scorn rather than an assurance.

Second, the critics have good reasons to be worried or outraged.

These agreements would make it very difficult or even impossible for
patients and government health authorities to have access to the much
cheaper generic versions of the medicines, because of the tighter patent
reg­ime the US is proposing in the TPPA.

As a result, millions of patients could be deprived of life-saving
drugs since they, and their governments, cannot afford to buy the
branded products.

According to MSF, the first generation of HIV drugs have come down
in price by 99% over the last decade, from US$10,000 (RM33,000) per
person per year in 2000 to roughly US$60 (RM196) today.

This is due to generic production in
India, Brazil and Thailand, where these drugs were not patented.

This dramatic price drop enabled HIV/AIDS treatment to be scaled up for over six million people in developing countries.

According to MSF, the US proposals in the TPPA would cause many problems.

These would include extending the term of the patents beyond the
already lengthy 20 years, the provision of “data exclusivity” (which
will require generic companies to undertake their own costly clinical
trials),
and widening the scope of what medicines
are patentable.

In Malaysia, several patient and medical groups in 2012 issued a joint statement
opposing the US proposals, which they say will reduce access to medicines.

“We categorically oppose US demands for longer and stronger patents
on medicines and medical technologies that are essential to save
Malaysian lives,” said leaders of six groups.

HIV second line medicines like Kaletra are required to save lives, and are often out of reach to persons living with HIV.

Many other conditions depend on generic medicines, such as cancer,
tuberculosis, malaria and diabetes. They asked that the US proposals be
rejected.

But it is not only medicines that are affected. Consumers of
information, media and books too will be affected by tighter copyright
laws that are likely to result in more expensive use of information
materials and the Internet.

Health groups such as the Malaysian Council for Tobacco Control
point out that measures
to control cigarette sales, such as requiring plain packaging, will be
threatened as the tobacco companies can sue the governments for
affecting their revenues.

Under an investor-state dispute system (ISDS) in the TPPA, foreign
investors can sue governments in an international tribunal, on grounds
that their future revenues are affected by new policies.

Many cases against governments for their health and environmental
policies have been already brought by companies under free trade
agreements that contain this ISDS, and other bilateral investment
treaties.

A tobacco firm has sued Australia and Uruguay for their plain-packaging policy.

A Swedish company made a US$2bil (RM6.5bil) claim against the German
government for its policy to phase out nuclear power after the
Fukushima nuclear accident.

Germany has told the European Commission to exclude the ISDS
mechanism in the TTIP, and the Commission has suspended negotiations
with the US on ISDS.

In the TPPA, however, the ISDS is still the lynchpin of the whole
agreement, as it is a strong enforcement mechanism that hangs over the
heads of governments that naturally do not like being sued by companies
in an international tribunal for millions or billions
of dollars.

Thus, Obama’s assurances that there should be no worries about
companies taking action on governments for their consumer and
environmental policies ring hollow when many such actions have already
been taken under existing US FTAs and other treaties.

Sunday, 30 March 2014

PETALING JAYA: Malaysians have been warned against
investing in virtual or Internet money as their savings could be wiped
out if the exchange is hacked or runs into financial troubles.

Over the last month, two major Bitcoin exchanges in Japan and Canada
have gone offline, filed for bankruptcy or closed down after claiming
more than US$500mil (RM1.6bil) in losses due to hacking.

In light of the controversy, Bank Negara has advised the public to
be cautious of the risks involved in using digital currency, stressing
that Bitcoin is not recognised as legal tender in Malaysia.

“The Central Bank does not regulate the operations of Bitcoin. The
value is subject to fluctuations, (hence) the value of the investments
may not be preserved,” an official told Sunday Star.

China, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Germany, France and Russia,
have also issued similar warnings or banned the use of virtual currency.
In Singapore, there are plans to regulate virtual currency exchanges
and vending machines to address concerns that they could be used for
money laundering or to fund terrorism activities.

Last week, Bitcoin rolled out its first auto vending machines (AVM)
at the Bangsar Shopping Complex in Kuala Lumpur and Gurney Plaza in
Penang. Singapore-based Numoni Pte Ltd, which developed and launched the
AVMs here, estimated that there were some 2,000 Bitcoin users in
Malaysia and was targeting to install 100 Bitcoins AVMs within three
years.

Its CEO Norma Sit said that Bitcoins were still in demand despite different countries deliberating its acceptance.

“The AVM lets the public buy small amounts of Bitcoin, which in many
countries, is seen as an international voucher that can be used to
barter for goods online,” she said.

Bitcoin Malaysia founder Colbert Low said Bitcoin had many
unreported successes but was unfairly put in a bad light because of the
recent controversy outside of Malaysia.

On March 10, Mt Gox, the world’s biggest Bitcoin exchange filed for
bankruptcy protection in the United States, two weeks after its
Tokyo-based exchange reportedly took its entire operation offline and
filed for bankruptcy in Japan after claiming to have lost around
US$500mil (RM1.6bil) to hacking.

Admitting that there were failures in companies and individuals that
provided Bitcoin services, Low stressed that the Mt Gox case was “not
Bitcoin” but specific to the exchange.

He described Bitcoin as a “building block for the future” and an innovative decentralised payment system software.

“Currency pricing is just one feature.

“Using it as a speculative tool for investment is up to the
individual. Due diligence is needed and you cannot blame Bitcoin for
losses suffered,” he said, cautioning that like any new technology,
there are risks involved and bugs to fix.

Contributed by Christina Chin The Star/Asian News Netowork

First Bitcoin AVM launched in M’sia

One month after it launched its Bitcoin AVM in Mobile World Congress
2014 in Barcelona, Spain in February 2014, Numoni has installed its
Bitcoin AVMs in Bangsar Shopping Centre in Kuala Lumpur and at Gurney
Plaza in Penang.

Earlier this year, Bank Negara Malaysia issued a statement announcing
that the Bitcoin is not recognised as legal tender in Malaysia.

"The Central Bank does not regulate the operations of Bitcoin. The
public is therefore advised to be cautious of the risks associated with
the usage of such digital currency," it had said.

Called the Numoni Nugen B2-Spirit machine, Numoni had also earlier
launched its machines at four prominent locations in Singapore where
people can transact.

Numoni CEO Norma Sit said while different countries are deliberating over the acceptance of Bitcoin, Bitcoin remains in demand.

"The Numoni Bitcoin Vending Machines enables the public to
participate in buying small amounts of this crypto-currency that is seen
in many countries as an international voucher that can be used to
barter for goods online. The machines, which are assembled in Malaysia
in our Senai factory, was fully developed by Numoni in Singapore since
2012," Sit said in a statement.

Numoni targets to install 10 Bitcoin AVMs nationwide within one year and 100 AVMs within three years.

Bitcoin, a digital crypto currency, had taken centrestage on
financial news recently with much focus on issues surrounding Mt Gox, a
Bitcoin Exchange based in Tokyo, that was reportedly hacked.
Nonetheless, investors and industry players continue to strongly support
the virtual currency that is today one of the largest in the world.

Numoni has appointed BTC Future Sdn Bhd for the distribution of Bitcoin AVMs in Peninsula Malaysia.

The Numoni machines can be deployed to sell prepaid airtime and other
voucher products on connection with telco gateways. Numoni will work
with other industry partners in Malaysia to enable the sale of prepaid
airtime on the Nugen machines with an intended roll-out in 2014.

The Numoni Bitcoin AVM reads the user's Bitcoin QR Code, and
completes the request to purchase with the insertion of fiat money. The
Numoni Bitcoin AVMs can be linked to multiple Bitcoin Exchanges enabling
the machines to present the best available price at the time of the
requested transaction to Bitcoin customers.

Customers can buy and sell Bitcoins at Numoni Bitcoin AVMs. The
machine enables users to sell their Bitcoins through a simple cash-out
process working with retail merchants' cash-out-points. Numoni has
selected not to implement the cash-out mechanism in Singapore or
Malaysia.

"From inception, Numoni understood that virtual currencies and mobile
wallets will have tremendous impact on daily lives, in light of the
incredible global penetration of mobile phones that today reaches all
communities," said Sit.

Sit added that it was a matter of time before virtual currencies are
adopted to make life easier for billions who remain underserved by banks
and financial institutions.

This story has been appended to include a statement from Dorian Nakamoto received on March 19th when Newsweek was first contacted directly by Mr. Nakamoto's attorney, denying his role in Bitcoin.

Satoshi Nakamoto stands at the end of his sunbaked driveway looking timorous. And annoyed.

He's wearing a rumpled T-shirt, old blue jeans and white gym socks,
without shoes, like he has left the house in a hurry. His hair is
unkempt, and he has the thousand-mile stare of someone who has gone
weeks without sleep.

He stands not with defiance, but with the slackness of a person who has waged battle for a long time and now faces a grave loss.

Two police officers from the Temple City, Calif., sheriff's
department flank him, looking puzzled. "So, what is it you want to ask
this man about?" one of them asks me. "He thinks if he talks to you he's
going to get into trouble."

"I don't think he's in any trouble," I say. "I would like to ask him about Bitcoin. This man is Satoshi Nakamoto."

"What?" The police officer balks. "This is the guy who created Bitcoin? It looks like he's living a pretty humble life."

I'd come here to try to find out more about Nakamoto and his humble
life. It seemed ludicrous that the man credited with inventing Bitcoin -
the world's most wildly successful digital currency, with transactions
of nearly $500 million a day at its peak - would retreat to Los
Angeles's San Gabriel foothills, hole up in the family home and leave
his estimated $400 million of Bitcoin riches untouched. It seemed
similarly implausible that Nakamoto's first response to my knocking at
his door would be to call the cops. Now face to face, with two police
officers as witnesses, Nakamoto's responses to my questions about
Bitcoin were careful but revealing.

Tacitly acknowledging his role in the Bitcoin project, he looks down,
staring at the pavement and categorically refuses to answer questions.

"I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he says,
dismissing all further queries with a swat of his left hand. "It's been
turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer
have any connection."

Nakamoto refused to say any more, and the police made it clear our conversation was over.

But a two-month investigation and interviews with those closest to
Nakamoto and the developers who worked most frequently with him on the
out-of-nowhere global phenomenon that is Bitcoin reveal the myths
surrounding the world's most famous crypto-currency are largely just
that - myths - and the facts are much stranger than the well-established
fiction.

Far from leading to a Tokyo-based whiz kid using the name "Satoshi
Nakamoto" as a cipher or pseudonym (a story repeated by everyone from
Bitcoin's rabid fans to The New Yorker), the trail followed by Newsweek led
to a 64-year-old Japanese-American man whose name really is Satoshi
Nakamoto. He is someone with a penchant for collecting model trains and a
career shrouded in secrecy, having done classified work for major
corporations and the U.S. military.

Standing before me, eyes downcast, appeared to be the father of Bitcoin.

There are several Satoshi Nakamotos living in North America and
beyond - both dead and alive - including a Ralph Lauren menswear
designer in New York and another who died in Honolulu in 2008, according
to the Social Security Index's Death Master File. There's even one on
LinkedIn who claims to have started Bitcoin and is based in Japan. But
none of these profiles seem to fit other known details and few of the
leads proved credible. Of course, there is also the chance "Satoshi
Nakamoto" is a pseudonym, but that raises the question why someone who
wishes to remain anonymous would choose such a distinctive name. It was
only while scouring a database that contained the registration cards of
naturalized U.S. citizens that a Satoshi Nakamoto turned up whose
profile and background offered a potential match. But it was not until
after ordering his records from the National Archives and conducting
many more interviews that a cohesive picture began to take shape.

Two weeks before our meeting in Temple City, I struck up an email
correspondence with Satoshi Nakamoto, mostly discussing his interest in
upgrading and modifying model steam trains with computer-aided design
technologies. I obtained Nakamoto's email through a company he buys
model trains from.

He has been buying train parts from Japan and England since he was a
teenager, saying, "I do machining myself, manual lathe, mill, surface
grinders."

The process also requires a good amount of math, something at which
Nakamoto - and his entire family - excels. The eldest of three brothers
who all work in engineering and technical fields, Nakamoto graduated
from California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, Calif., with a
degree in physics. But unlike his brothers, his circuitous career path
is very hard to trace.

Nakamoto ceased responding to emails I'd sent him immediately after I
began asking about Bitcoin. This was in late February. Before that, I'd
also asked about his professional background, for which there is very
little to be found in the public record. I only received evasive
answers. When he asked about my background, I told him I'd be happy to
elaborate over the phone and called him to introduce myself. When there
was no response, I asked his oldest son, Eric Nakamoto, 31, to reach out
and see whether his father would talk about Bitcoin. The message came
back he would not. Attempts through other family members also failed.

After that, Nakamoto disregarded my requests to speak by phone and
did not return calls. The day I arrived at his modest, single-family
home in southern California, his silver Toyota Corolla CE was parked in
the driveway but he didn't answer the door.

At one point he did peer out, cracking open the door screen and
making eye contact briefly. Then he shut it. That was the only time I
saw him without police officers in attendance.

"You want to know about my amazing physicist brother?" says Arthur
Nakamoto, Satoshi Nakamoto's youngest sibling, who works as director of
quality assurance at Wavestream Corp., a maker of radio frequency
amplifiers in San Dimas, Calif.

"He's a brilliant man. I'm just a humble engineer. He's very focused
and eclectic in his way of thinking. Smart, intelligent, mathematics,
engineering, computers. You name it, he can do it."

But he also had a warning.

"My brother is an asshole. What you don't know about him is that he's
worked on classified stuff. His life was a complete blank for a while.
You're not going to be able to get to him. He'll deny everything. He'll
never admit to starting Bitcoin."

And with that, Nakamoto's brother hung up.

His remarks suggested I was on the right track, but that was not
enough. While his brother suggested Nakamoto would be capable of
starting Bitcoin, I was not at all sure whether he knew for certain one
way or the other. He said they didn't get along and didn't speak often.

I plainly needed to talk to Satoshi Nakamoto face to face.

Bitcoin is a currency that lives in the world of computer code
and can be sent anywhere in the world without racking up bank or
exchange fees, and is then stored on a cellphone or hard drive until
used again. Because the currency resides in code, it can also be lost
when a hard drive crashes, or stolen if someone else accesses the keys
to the code.

"The whole reason geeks get excited about Bitcoin is that it is the
most efficient way to do financial transactions," says Bitcoin's chief
scientist, Gavin Andresen, 47. He acknowledges that Bitcoin's ease of
use can also lead to easy theft and that it is safest when stored in a
safe-deposit box or on a hard drive that's not connected to the
Internet. "For anyone who's tried to wire money overseas, you can see
how much easier an international Bitcoin transaction is. It's just as
easy as sending an email."

Even so, Bitcoin is vulnerable to massive theft, fraud and scandal,
which has seen the price of Bitcoins whipsaw from more than $1,200 each
last year to as little as $130 in late February.

The currency has attracted the attention of the U.S. Senate, the
Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Reserve, the Internal
Revenue Service, the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement
Network, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, which in October shuttered the online black market
Silk Road and seized its $3.5 million cache of Bitcoin. "The FBI is now
one of the largest holders of Bitcoin in the world," Andresen says.

In recent weeks, a revived version of Silk Road as well as one of
Bitcoin's biggest exchanges, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, shut down and filed
for bankruptcy after attacks by hackers drained each of millions of
dollars.

Andresen, a Silicon Valley refugee in Amherst, Mass., says he worked
closely with the person "or entity" known as Satoshi Nakamoto on the
development of Bitcoin from June 2010 to April 2011. This was before the
rise of today's multibillion-dollar Bitcoin economy, boosted last year
by the unexpected, if cautious, endorsement of outgoing Federal Reserve
chair Ben Bernanke, who said virtual currencies "may hold long-term
promise."

Since then, Bitcoin ATMs have been cropping up across North America
(with some of the first in Vancouver, British Columbia; Boston; and
Albuquerque, N.M.) while the acceptance of Bitcoin has spread to
businesses as diverse as Tesla, OkCupid, Reddit, Overstock.com and
Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson's aviation company, which has said it
will blast people into space if they cough up enough Bitcoin.

"Working on Bitcoin's core code is really scary, actually,
because if you wreck something, you can break this huge $8 billion
project," says Andresen. "And that's happened. We have broken it in the
past."

For nearly a year, Andresen corresponded with the founder of Bitcoin a
few times a week, often putting in 40-hour weeks refining the Bitcoin
code. Throughout their correspondence, Nakamoto's evasiveness was his
hallmark, Andresen says.

In fact, he never even heard Nakamoto's voice, because the founder of
Bitcoin would not communicate by phone. Their interactions, he says,
always took place by "email or private message on the Bitcointalk forum," where enthusiasts meet online.

"He was the kind of person who, if you made an honest mistake, he
might call you an idiot and never speak to you again," Andresen says.
"Back then, it was not clear that creating Bitcoin might be a legal
thing to do. He went to great lengths to protect his anonymity."

Nakamoto also ignored all of Andresen's questions about where he was
from, his professional background, what other projects he'd worked on
and whether his name was real or a pseudonym (many of Bitcoin's devotees
use pseudonyms). "He was never chatty," Andresen says. "All we talked
about was code."

Andresen, an Australian who graduated from Princeton with a
Bachelor's in computer science, eventually became Nakamoto's point
person on a growing team of international coders and programmers who
worked on a volunteer basis to perfect the Bitcoin code after its
inauspicious launch in January 2009.

Andresen originally heard about Bitcoin the following year through a
blog he followed. He reached out to Nakamoto through one of the Bitcoin
founder's untraceable email addresses and offered his assistance. His
initial message to Bitcoin's inventor read: "Bitcoin is a brilliant
idea, and I want to help. What do you need?"

Andresen says he didn't give much thought to working for an anonymous
inventor. "I am a geek," he says simply. "I don't care if the idea came
from a good person or an evil person. Ideas stand on their own."

Other developers were driven by "enlightened self-interest," profit
or personal politics, he says. But nearly all were intrigued by the
promise of a digital currency accessible to anyone in the world that
could bypass central banks at a time when the global financial system
was on life support. In this respect, the launch of Bitcoin could not
have been better timed.

In 2008, just before Bitcoin's official kickoff, a somewhat stiffly written, nine-page proposal found its way onto the Internet bearing the name and email address of Satoshi Nakamoto.

The paper proposed "electronic cash" that "would allow online
payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going
through a financial institution," with transactions time-stamped and
viewable to all.

The masterstroke was replacing the role of banks as the trusted
middlemen with Bitcoin users, who would act as sentinels for the
integrity of the system, verifying transactions using their computing
power in exchange for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin production is designed to move at a carefully calibrated pace
to boost value and scarcity and remain inflation proof, halving its
quantity every four years, and is designed to stop proliferating when
Bitcoins reach a total of 21 million in 2140. (Bitcoins can be divided
by up to eight decimal places, with the smallest units called
"satoshis.")

"I got the impression that Satoshi was really doing it for political
reasons," says Andresen, who gets paid in Bitcoins - along with a
half-dozen other Bitcoin core developers working everywhere from Silicon
Valley to Switzerland - by the Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit working to standardize the currency.

He doesn't like the system we have today and wanted a different one
that would be more equal. He did not like the notion of banks and
bankers getting wealthy just because they hold the keys," says Andresen.

Holding the keys has also made early comers to Bitcoin wealthy beyond
measure. "I made a small investment in Bitcoin and it is actually
enough that I could now retire if I wanted to," Andresen says. "Overall,
I've made about $800 per penny I've invested. It's insane."

One of the first people to start working with Bitcoin's founder in
2009 was Martti Malmi, 25, a Helsinki programmer who invested in
Bitcoins. "I sold them in 2011 and bought a nice apartment," he says.
"Today, I could have bought 100 nice apartments."

Communication with Bitcoin's founder was becoming less frequent by
early 2011. Nakamoto stopped posting changes to the Bitcoin code and
ignored conversations on the Bitcoin forum.

Andresen was unprepared, however, for Satoshi Nakamoto's reaction to an email exchange between them on April 26, 2011.

"I wish you wouldn't keep talking about me as a mysterious shadowy
figure," Nakamoto wrote to Andresen. "The press just turns that into a
pirate currency angle. Maybe instead make it about the open source
project and give more credit to your dev contributors; it helps motivate
them."

Then he told Nakamoto he'd accepted an invitation to speak at the
Central Intelligence Agency headquarters. "I hope that by talking
directly to them and, more importantly, listening to their
questions/concerns, they will think of Bitcoin the way I do - as a
just-plain-better, more efficient, less-subject-to-political-whims
money," he said. "Not as an all-powerful black-market tool that will be
used by anarchists to overthrow the System."

From that moment, Satoshi Nakamoto stopped responding to emails and dropped off the map.

Nakamoto's house

Nakamoto's family describe him as extremely intelligent, moody and
obsessively private, a man of few words who screens his phone calls,
anonymizes his emails and, for most of his life, has been preoccupied
with the two things for which Bitcoin has now become known: money and
secrecy.

For the past 40 years, Satoshi Nakamoto has not used his birth name
in his daily life. At the age of 23, after graduating from California
State Polytechnic University, he changed his name to "Dorian Prentice
Satoshi Nakamoto," according to records filed with the U.S. District
Court of Los Angeles in 1973. Since then, he has not used the name
Satoshi but instead signs his name "Dorian S. Nakamoto."

Descended from Samurai and the son of a Buddhist priest, Nakamoto was
born in July 1949 in the city of Beppu, Japan, where he was brought up
poor in the Buddhist tradition by his mother, Akiko. In 1959, after a
divorce and remarriage, she immigrated to California, taking her three
sons with her. Now age 93, she lives with Nakamoto in Temple City.

Nakamoto did not get along with his stepfather, but his aptitude for
math and science was evident from an early age, says Arthur, who also
notes, "He is fickle and has very weird hobbies."

Just after graduating college, Nakamoto went to work on defense and
electronics communications for Hughes Aircraft in southern California.
"That was just the beginning," says Arthur, who also worked at Hughes.
"He is the only person I have ever known to show up for a job interview
and tell the interviewer he's an idiot - and then prove it."

Nakamoto has six children. The first, a son from his first marriage
in the 1980's, is Eric Nakamoto, an animation and 3-D graphics designer
in Philadelphia. His next five children were with his second wife, Grace
Mitchell, 56, who lives in Audubon, N.J., and says she met Nakamoto at a
Unitarian church mixer in Cherry Hill, N.J., in the mid-1980s. She
recalls he came to the East Coast after leaving Hughes Aircraft, now
part of Raytheon, in his 20s and next worked for Radio Corporation of
America in Camden, N.J., as a systems engineer.

"We were doing defensive electronics and communications for the
military, government aircraft and warships, but it was classified and I
can't really talk about it," confirms David Micha, president of the
company now called L-3 Communications.

Mitchell says her husband "did not talk much about his work" and
sometimes took on military projects independent of RCA. In 1987, the
couple moved back to California, where Nakamoto worked as a computer
engineer for communications and technologies companies in the Los
Angeles area, including financial information service Quotron Systems
Inc., sold in 1994 to Reuters, and Nortel Networks.

Nakamoto, who was laid off twice in the 1990s, according to Mitchell,
fell behind on mortgage payments and taxes and their home was
foreclosed. That experience, says Nakamoto's oldest daughter, Ilene
Mitchell, 26, may have informed her father's attitude toward banks and
the government.

A libertarian, Nakamoto encouraged his daughter to be independent,
start her own business and "not be under the government's thumb," she
says. "He was very wary of the government, taxes and people in charge."

She also describes her father as a man who worked all hours, from
before the family rose in the morning to late into the night. "He would
keep his office locked and we would get into trouble if we touched his
computer," she recalls. "He was always expounding on politics and
current events. He loved new and old technology. He built his own
computers and was very proud of them."

Around 2000, Nakamoto and Grace separated, though they have never
divorced. They moved back to New Jersey with their five children and
Nakamoto worked as a software engineer for the Federal Aviation
Administration in New Jersey in the wake of the September 11 attacks,
doing security and communications work, says Mitchell.

"It was very secret," she says. "He left that job sometime in 2001 and I don't think he's had a steady job since."

When the FAA contract ended, Nakamoto moved back to Temple City,
where for the rest of that decade things get hazy about what kind of
work he undertook.

Ever since Bitcoin rose to prominence there has been a hunt for
the real Satoshi Nakamoto. Did he act alone or was he working for the
government? Bitcoin has been linked to everything from the National
Security Agency to the International Monetary Fund.

Yet, in a world where almost every big Silicon Valley innovation
seems to erupt in lawsuits over who thought of it first, in the case of
Bitcoin the founder has remained conspicuously silent for the past five
years.

"I could see my dad doing something brilliant and not accepting the
greater effect of it," says Ilene Mitchell, who works for Partnerships
for Student Achievement in Beaverton, Ore. "But I honestly don't see him
being straight about it. Any normal person would be all over it. But
he's not totally a normal person."

Nakamoto's middle brother, Tokuo Nakamoto, who lives near his brother
and mother, in Duarte, Calif., agrees. "He is very meticulous in what
he does, but he is very afraid to take himself out into the media, so
you will have to excuse him," he says.

Characteristics of Satoshi Nakamoto, the Bitcoin founder, that
dovetail with Dorian S. Nakamoto, the computer engineer, are numerous.
Those working most closely with Bitcoin's founder noticed several
things: he seemed to be older than the other Bitcoin developers. And he
worked alone.

"He didn't seem like a young person and he seemed to be influenced by
a lot of people in Silicon Valley," says Nakamoto's Finnish protégé,
Martti Malmi. Andresen concurs: "Satoshi's style of writing code was
old-school. He used things like reverse Polish notation."

In addition, the code was not always terribly neat, another sign that
Nakamoto was not working with a team that would have cleaned up the
code and streamlined it.

"Everyone who looked at his code has pretty much concluded it was a
single person," says Andresen. "We have rewritten roughly 70 percent of
the code since inception. It wasn't written with nice interfaces. It was
like one big hairball. It was incredibly tight and well-written at the
lower level but where functions came together it could be pretty messy."

Satoshi Nakamoto's 2008 online proposal also hints at his age, with
the odd reference to "disk space" - something that hasn't been an issue
since the last millennium - and older research citations of
contemporaries' work going back to 1957.

The Bitcoin code is based on a network protocol that's been
established for decades. Its brilliance is not so much in the code
itself, says Andresen, but in the design, which unites functions to
reach multiple ends. The punctuation in the proposal is also consistent
with how Dorian S. Nakamoto writes, with double spaces after periods and
other format quirks.

In the debate between those who claim Nakamoto writes curiously
"flawless English" for a Japanese man and those who contend otherwise,
writing under both names can swerve wildly between uppercase and
lowercase, full spellings and abbreviations, proper English and slang.

In his correspondences and writings, it has widely been noted that
Satoshi Nakamoto alternates between British and American spellings -
and, depending on his audience, veers between highly abbreviated
verbiage and a more formal, polished style. Grace Mitchell says her
husband does the same.

Dorian S. Nakamoto's use of English, she says, was likely influenced
by his lifelong interest in collecting model trains, many of which he
imported from England as a teenager while he was still learning English.

Mitchell suspects Nakamoto's initial interest in creating a digital
currency that could be used anywhere in the world may have stemmed from
his frustration with bank fees and high exchange rates when he was
sending international wires to England to buy model trains. "He would
always complain about that," she says. "I would not say he writes
flawless English. He will pick up words and mix the spellings."

Eric, Nakamoto's oldest son from his first marriage, says he remains
torn over whether his father is the founder of Bitcoin, noting that
messages from the latter appear more "concise" and "refined than that of
my father's."

Perhaps the most compelling parallel between the two Nakamotos are
their professional skill sets and career timeframes. Andresen says
Satoshi Nakamoto told him about how long it took him to develop Bitcoin -
a span that falls squarely into Dorian S. Nakamoto's job lapse starting
in 2001. "Satoshi said he'd been working on Bitcoin for years before he
launched it," Andresen says. "I could see the original code taking at
least two years to write. He had a revelation that he had solved
something no one had solved before."

Satoshi Nakamoto's three-year silence also dovetails with health
issues suffered by Dorian S. Nakamoto in the past few years, his family
says. "It has been hard, because he suffered a stroke several months ago
and before that he was dealing with prostate cancer," says his wife,
who works as a critical-care nurse in New Jersey. "He hasn't seen his
kids for the past few years."

She has been unable to get Nakamoto to speak with her about whether
he was the founder of Bitcoin. Eric Nakamoto says his father has denied
it. Tokuo and Arthur Nakamoto believe their brother will leave the truth
unconfirmed.

"Dorian can just be paranoid," says Tokuo. "I cannot get through to
him. I don't think he will answer any of these questions to his family
truthfully."

Of course, none of this puts to rest the biggest question of all -
the one that only Satoshi Nakamoto himself can answer: What has kept him
from spending his hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin, which he
reaped when he launched the currency years ago? According to his family
both he - and they - could really use the money.

Andresen says if Nakamoto is as concerned about maintaining his
anonymity as he remembers the answer might be simple: He does not want
to participate in the Bitcoin madness. "If you come out as the leader of
Bitcoin, now you have to make appearances and presentations and
comments to the press and that didn't really fit with Satoshi's
personality," he says. "He didn't really want to lead it anymore. He was
pretty intolerant to incompetence. And he also realized the project
would go on without him."

On the other hand, it is possible Nakamoto simply lost the private
security keys to unlock his Bitcoin and cash in on his riches. Andresen,
however, says he doubts it. "He was too disciplined," he says.

If Nakamoto ever sells his Bitcoin fortune, he would likely have to
do so at a legitimate Bitcoin bank or exchange, which would not only
give away his identity but alert everyone from the IRS to the FBI of his
movements. While Bitcoin lets its users conduct transactions
anonymously, all transactions can be viewed transparently online - and
everyone is watching Nakamoto's Bitcoin to see if he spends it, says
Andresen.

For his part, Andresen says he is inclined to respect Nakamoto's
anonymity. "When programmers get together, we don't talk about who
Satoshi Nakamoto is," he says. "We talk about how we should have
invested in more Bitcoin. I mean, we're curious about it, but honestly,
we really don't care."

Calling the possibility her father could also be the father of
Bitcoin "flabbergasting," Ilene Mitchell says she isn't surprised her
father would choose to stay under cover if he was the man behind this
venture, especially as he is currently concerned about his health.

"He is very wary of government interference in general," she says.
"When I was little, there was a game we used to play. He would say,
'Pretend the government agencies are coming after you.' And I would hide
in the closet."

Forensic analysts Sharon Sergeant and Barbara Mathews contributed to research for this piece.

The first time I heard the term "bitcoin" was from my son in
mid-February 2014. After being contacted by a reporter, my son called me
and used the word,which I had never before heard. Shortly thereafter,
the reporter confronted me at my home. I called the police. I never
consented to speak with the reporter. In an ensuing discussion with a
reporter from the Associated Press, I called the technology "bitcom."

I was still unfamiliar with the term.My background is in
engineering. I also have the ability to program. My most recent job was
as an electrical engineer troubleshooting air traffic controlequipment
for the FAA. I have no knowledge of nor have I ever worked on
cryptography, peer to peer systems, or alternative currencies.

I have not been able to find steady work as an engineer or
programmer for ten years. I have worked as a laborer, polltaker, and
substitute teacher. I discontinued my internet service in 2013 due to
severe financial distress. I am trying to recover from prostate surgery
in October 2012 and a stroke I suffered in October of 2013. My prospects
for gainful employment has been harmed because of Newsweek's article.

Newsweek's false report has been the source of a great deal of
confusion and stress for myself, my 93-year old mother, my siblings, and
their families. I offer my sincerest thanks to those people in the
United States and around the world who have offered me their support. I
have retained legal counsel. This will be our last public statement on
this matter. I ask that you now respect our privacy.

Saturday, 29 March 2014

Lone voice: The Malaysian delegation listening to the Chinese committee member talk in the hotel ballroom in Beijing. - AFP

BEIJING: Family members of Chinese passengers on
board MH370 staged a mass walkout during a briefing by a high-level
Malaysian delegation here.

A member of the committee that
represents the relatives had asked them to leave the Lido Hotel ballroom
as a show of discontent.

The families are convinced that the
Malaysian authorities were hiding facts concerning the airliner, which
had gone missing with 239 passengers and crew members.

Delegation
members had just finished answering questions posed to them by the
families a day earlier when the committee member stood up and addressed
the crowd.

“Have you heard any updates related to our loved ones
from the delegation?” he asked. “Have you heard any answers from the
delegation in response to our key queries?”

The crowd shouted “No” in unison.

The man then asked the family members to leave the ballroom and to go
“discuss the next course of action” with the committee in another room.

He stressed that the families should do so voluntarily.

After all the relatives had left, the man posed several questions to
the delegation and then concluded with: “You have seen from the incident
today that the Chinese people and the next-of-kin are united.

“What you are hiding now will ultimately see the light of the day. There
will certainly be people who will receive due punishment.”

Despite the awkwardness of the situation, members of the delegation remained seated at the front of the ballroom.

BEIJING: Relatives of the Chinese passengers aboard missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have demanded China mount its own inquiry into the disappearance, a letter shows.

The document, sent to Beijing's special envoy in Kuala Lumpur, denounced Malaysia's handling of the search and asked the Chinese government to set up its own "investigation office".

News of the letter comes as a committee set up by relatives of the 153 Chinese passengers has begun discussions with lawyers ..
Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/32831901.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Friday, 28 March 2014

Underwater scanners that will be used to try to locate the black box flight recorders from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have arrived at the search headquarters in Australia, as crews pin their hopes on new satellite images showing 300 pieces of possible debris in the southern Indian Ocean.

The
new information came as strong winds and icy weather forced planes and
ships to call off their search on Thursday of an area where officials
believe the plane came down almost three weeks ago.

Australian
maritime officials said several planes had reached the search zone,
located about 1,550 miles (2,500 km) south-west of Perth, but had
returned early without finding any of the floating debris.

Sam
Cardwell, a spokesman for the Australian maritime safety authority, said
the planes had stayed in the area for about two hours. "They got a bit
of time in, but it was not useful because there was no visibility," he
said.

The bad weather is expected to last well into Friday,
raising the possibility that the hunt for hundreds of pieces of debris
that could be from MH370 will not resume until the weekend.

The
arrival of sensitive tracking equipment offers a glimmer of hope for a
breakthrough in what has become the biggest mystery in commercial
aviation history.

An Australian naval vessel ship will sweep the seabed by towing an underwater listening device
deep below the surface in the hope of picking up an ultrasonic signal
from one or both of the plane's black box recorders, while a small
submersible drone will be used to scan the sea floor for signs of
wreckage.

Thursday's search involved 11 planes and five ships in an
area of the vast southern Indian Ocean where officials believe the plane
ran out of fuel and crashed, killing all 239 people aboard.

They
were trying to locate 122 objects captured in French satellite images on
23 March that senior Malaysian officials described as the most credible
lead yet as to the jetliner's whereabouts.

Later on Thursday,
Thailand said it had satellite images showing 300 floating objects
floating in roughly the same area. The objects, ranging in length from
two to 15 metres, were found about 125 miles from the site where the
French satellite had earlier spotted more than 100 pieces of debris.

Anond
Snidvongs, executive director of Thailand's space technology
development agency, said the information had been passed on to Malaysia. "But we cannot – dare not – confirm they are debris from the plane," he told AFP.

Officials
from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said Thursday's search
had been split into two areas totalling 78,000 sq km (30,000 square
miles). The operation involves planes and ships from the US, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

Locating
and retrieving at least some of the floating objects could prove
crucial in the absence of any physical evidence supporting the theory
that MH370 ran out of fuel hours after it turned sharply off course and
disappeared from air traffic controllers' screens over the South China
Sea en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Search teams are hoping
that the detection equipment will be able to pick up acoustic pings
emitted every second from the plane's black box flight data recorder and
cockpit voice recorder.

Each of the two recorders has a beacon,
attached to the outside of the black box, which once activated by
contact with water makes a sound every second.

But it is a race
against time: the beacons have a battery life of 30 days, after which
the pings begin to fade. Chuck Schofield of Dukane Seacom, a company
that has sold the pingers to Malaysia Airlines, told Associated Press
that the batteries might last an additional five days before dying.

Assuming
that the plane crashed on 8 March, as Malaysian officials insist, that
means the beacons aboard MH370 will begin to fade around 7 April and
could go silent around 12 April.

The US navy tracking equipment – a
special listening device known as a "towed pinger locator" and an
underwater drone dubbed Bluefin-21 – has arrived in Perth, where the
international effort is based and is being sent to the search site.

Reports
said the equipment would be loaded on to the Australian navy's HMAS
Ocean Shield, which will drag the locator through the water in the hope
of picking up a signal.

The drone can dive to depths of about
4,500 metres, using sonar to form images of the ocean floor. Similar
technology was used to locate the main wreckage from Air France flight
447 in 2011 – yet it still took searchers two years to recover the black
box from the depths of the Atlantic.

The operation has been
hampered by bad weather and conditions, prolonging the anguish of
relatives after Malaysian officials said they had concluded that the
aircraft had crashed into the sea with the loss of all on board.

Experts
said search crews faced significant dangers due to frequent bad weather
and the area's distance from land. "This is a really rough piece of
ocean, which is going to be a terrific issue," Kerry Sieh, director of
the Earth Observatory of Singapore, told Associated Press. "I worry that
people carrying out the rescue mission are going to get into trouble."

Criticism
of the Malaysian authorities' handling of the incident has continued,
with relatives of the 154 Chinese passengers on board MH370 ridiculing
Malaysian government and airline officials at a meeting in Beijing on
Wednesday.

On Thursday, Malaysia Airlines ran a full-page message
of condolence in the New Straits Times. "Our sincerest condolences go
out to the loved ones of the 239 passengers, friends and colleagues.
Words alone cannot express our enormous sorrow and pain," it said.

Chinese insurance companies have started paying compensation to the families of passengers, according to Xinhua.

Several
Chinese celebrities took to social media to voice anger at the
Malaysian government. In a widely shared post on Sina Weibo, China's
version of Twitter, the singer and actor Chen Kun said he would boycott
Malaysian goods, while the Hong Kong-born actor Deric Wan called for
evidence that the plane had crashed.

"What Chinese people wanted
was the truth of the missing plane instead of a pointless press
conference," he said on Weibo, according to China Daily.

But in an
opinion piece in Thursday's Global Times, Wang Wenwen said that while
Malaysia had handled the crash aftermath ineptly, raw emotion should not
be allowed to determine relations between the Chinese and Malaysian
governments. "It is too early to let public opinion lead the way at the
current stage. Whether Beijing-Kuala Lumpur relations will dim depends
to some extent on how the [Chinese] government will act between
diplomatic manoeuvering and public opinion."

The New Zealand
family of Paul Weeks, one of the passengers, added their voice to
criticism of the Malaysian authorities. "The whole situation has been
handled appallingly, incredibly insensitively," Sara Weeks, the missing
man's sister, told Radio Live in New Zealand.

"Everyone is angry
about it. "The Malaysian government, the airline – it's just all been
incredibly poor. Who's to say they couldn't have located the plane the
day that it happened?" - The Guardian

Don't let extreme feelings preempt MH370 findings

A ground crew member directs a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion upon its returns to RAAF base Pearce from searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 over the southern Indian Ocean on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

Monday was a dramatic day for the Chinese relatives of those aboard the
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that disappeared over two weeks ago.

After
the Malaysian side announced that the airliner had "ended in the
southern Indian Ocean" and none of the passengers survived, relatives of
the 154 Chinese citizens on board became furious. They released a
statement accusing the Malaysian government of being "murderers" and
protested outside the Malaysian embassy in Beijing the next day.

These
families have the support of the Chinese people, notably with doubts
over the information released by the Malaysian side and criticism
against the Malaysian government on China's social media.

When
Victor Wong, a Chinese-Malaysian singer well known among the Chinese
public, expressed his condolences to the relatives of the victims on his
Sina Weibo account, a flurry of comments followed, blaming him for
being hypocritical and calling for a boycott of his performances in
China.

Many also urged the Chinese government to take a tough
stance toward Malaysia, which is thought by many to have mishandled the
search for the missing plane.

This mysterious accident is being
followed by the world, as are China's reactions. In the eyes of some
Western observers, China is "doing its best to foster a sense of
aggrievement" and "exploiting international incidents for domestic
gain."

Indeed, Malaysia should take most of the blame as it
dragged this painful accident on for too long. Its approach in handling
the aftermath of the tragedy raised doubts from international watchers.
The grievances of the Chinese people didn't come from nowhere.

There
have already been analyses in the foreign media speculating on a
strained relationship between China and Malaysia, despite the fact that
Malaysia was the first ASEAN country to establish diplomatic ties with
China in 1974 and that Malaysia is China's largest trading partner among
ASEAN countries.

China's tourist agencies have reported a sharp decline in the number of Chinese travelers choosing to visit Malaysia.

The
past few years have seen the Chinese government facing increasing
pressure from the public in making diplomatic decisions. There is a
worrying sign that the public mood might be fanned by some opinion
leaders at the price of ruining good people-to-people relationship
between the two countries.

It is too early to let public opinion
lead the way at the current stage. Whether Beijing-Kuala Lumpur
relations will dim depends to some extent on how the government will act
between diplomatic maneuvering and public opinion. - Global Times

Thursday, 27 March 2014

A model of a Boeing 777 aircraft is displayed as representatives of US law firm Ribbeck Law Chartered International hold a media briefing at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur on March 26, 2014. Family members of the victims of the ill-fated Flight MH370 are filing a RM4.95 billion (S$1.9 billion) suit for compensation, against Boeing and Malaysia Airlines. -- PHOTO: AFP

KUALA
LUMPUR - Family members of the victims of
the ill-fated Flight MH370 are filing a RM4.95 billion (S$1.9 billion)
suit for compensation, against Boeing and Malaysia Airlines.

Chicago-based firm Ribbeck Law Chartered, who is acting on behalf of
the family members, has started proceedings by filing a petition of
discovery in an Illinois court.

Ms Monica Kelly, the lead lawyer from Ribbeck Law, said the firm
which specialises in aviation law had been approached by family members
from China and Indonesia.

Of the 239 people on board MH370, there were 153 China nationals and seven Indonesians.

Ms Kelly said they had spoken to family members in many countries and
expected about half of those affected to take part in the suit.

She said the fact that neither the wreckage of MH370 nor the bodies
of the pasengers have been found would not affect the case, as they
would be inspecting the rest of the MAS fleet for similar design flaws.

"We've had successful cases where the plane, the victims or even the
blackbox were not found," said Ms Kelly, during a briefing with the
press in Kuala Lumpur.

"We have done many cases where wreckage was completely destroyed, or no bodies found, or wreckage found but no black boxes working. We are not relying on these things to start the legal process," said Kelly, during a briefing to the press here.

She said such suits can take anywhere between four months to five years, but expects this case to take between one-and-a-half to two years.

The firm would focus its suit against Boeing, as they believe it was a case of equipment malfunction but could expand the defendants to include other component manufacturers or even those who trained the crew.

A Malaysia Airlines spokesman said the airline is aware of the lawsuit.

"Our lawyers have been advised of this development.

" At this point in time, our top priority remains to provide any and all assistance to the families of the passengers and crew.

"Other matters will be dealt with appropriately," the spokesman said in a statement.

Mr Manuel Von Ribbeck of Ribbeck Law said they are 100 per cent
confident of winning the suit, as according to the law, passengers are
never at fault.

Mr Ribbeck said the coverage for compensation is about RM4.95 billion, and the firm would demand the full amount be paid.

For the purpose of the lawsuit, the firm assumes that the passengers
are dead, based on Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's announcement.

"We hope that miracles can happen, but based on the data we've seen
so far, it does not look good for the flight and her passengers," said
Mr Ribbeck.

Boeing, the manufacturers of the 777-200 aircraft, has been on the receiving end of a number of lawsuits in the past.

The most recent lawsuit was in January this year by a group of
passengers, represented by Mr Ribbeck Law, who were aboard an Asiana
Airlines flight that crash-landed in San Francisco on July 6 last year.

Three people were killed and more than 180 others hurt.

France's Satellite imagery shows 122 'potential objects'

This
handout picture received from the Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency
(MRSA) on March 27, 2014 shows imagery taken on March 23 by a French
satellite showing more than 100 floating objects (within higlighted
boxes) in the remote southern Indian Ocean.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency
(MRSA) has identified 122 “potential objects” that could be linked to
the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in an area of the southern
Indian Ocean, about 2,557km from Perth.

The MRSA had analysed satellite images provided by France’s Airbus Defence and Space.

Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said the
new development supported “the most credible lead” for focusing the
search in the southern Indian Ocean, alluding to the analysis of British
investigators that pointed to the area.

The objects were in an area of about 400sq km, he told the daily
press conference at the Putra World Trade Centre here yesterday.

“Some objects are a metre in length, others as much as 23m long.
Some of the objects appeared to be bright, indicating they are possibly
solid,” he said.

Hishammuddin, who is also Defence Minister, added that the MRSA
findings were immediately forwarded to the Australian Rescue
Co-ordination Centre in Perth.

“It must be emphasised that we cannot tell whether the potential objects are from MH370.

“Nevertheless, this is another new lead that will help direct the search operation,” he said.

Hishammuddin said the search operation now had four separate
satellite leads, from Australia, China and France, showing possible
debris.

What had to be done now was to determine whether it was really debris and linked to MH370, he added.

Hishammuddin said Australia was leading the search effort in the
southern Indian Ocean while Malaysia continued its coordinating role.

“Australia has divided the search area into two sectors: East and West.

“With the improved weather, 12 planes were deployed to the search area – six in the East sector and six in the West,” he said.

In the East sector, the search would be conducted by one Australian
P3 Orion, and three Australian civilian aircraft, one Chinese Ilyushin
IL-76 and one New Zealand P3 Orion.

Involved in the West sector were a US P8 Poseidon, two Australian P3
Orions and one each from South Korea and Japan as well as a civilian
aircraft.

Hishammuddin also said an international working group was helping refine Inmarsat data to further narrow the search area.

The working group – consisting of Inmarsat, the UK Air Accidents
Investigation Branch, Civil Aviation Administration of China, the US
National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation
Administration, Boeing and Rolls Royce as well as the relevant Malaysian
authorities – will attempt to determine more accurately the final
position of MH370. - The Star/ANN

Tuesday, 25 March 2014

Analysis by the British satellite company Inmarsat and the UK's
Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) was cited on Monday by the
Malaysian prime minister as the source of information that has narrowed
the location where the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean to a corridor a couple of hundred miles wide.

The
analysis follows fresh examination of eight satellite "pings" sent by
the aircraft between 1.11am and 8.11am Malaysian time on Saturday
8 March, when it vanished from radar screens.

The prime minister,
Najib Razak, said: "Based on their new analysis, Inmarsat and the AAIB
have concluded that MH370 flew along the southern corridor, and that its
last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth.

"This
is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites. It is
therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that,
according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian
Ocean."

He added that they had used a "type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort".

The
new method "gives the approximate direction of travel, plus or minus
about 100 miles, to a track line", Chris McLaughlin, senior
vice-president for external affairs at Inmarsat, told Sky News.
"Unfortunately this is a 1990s satellite over the Indian Ocean that is
not GPS-equipped. All we believe we can do is to say that we believe it
is in this general location, but we cannot give you the final few feet
and inches where it landed. It's not that sort of system."

McLaughlin
told CNN that there was no further analysis possible of the data.
"Sadly this is the limit. There's no global decision even after the Air
France loss [in June 2009, where it took two years to recover the plane
from the sea] to make direction and distance reporting compulsory. Ships
have to log in every six hours; with aircraft travelling at 500 knots
they would have to log in every 15 minutes. That could be done tomorrow
but the mandate is not there globally."

Since the plane
disappeared more than two weeks ago, many of the daily searches across
vast tracts of the Indian Ocean for the aircraft have relied on Inmarsat
information collated halfway across the world from a company that sits
on London's "Silicon Roundabout", by Old Street tube station.

Using
the data from just eight satellite "pings" after the plane's other
onboard Acars automatic tracking system went off at 1.07am, the team at
Inmarsat was initially able to calculate that it had either headed north
towards the Asian land mass or south, towards the emptiest stretches of
the India Ocean.

Inmarsat said that yesterday it had done new
calculations on the limited data that it had received from the plane in
order to come to its conclusion. McLaughlin told CNN that it was a
"groundbreaking but traditional" piece of mathematics which was then
checked by others in the space industry.

The company's system of satellites
provide voice contact with air traffic control when planes are out of
range of radar, which only covers about 10% of the Earth's surface, and
beyond the reach of standard radio over oceans. It also offers automatic
reporting of positions via plane transponders. It is possible to send
route instructions directly to the cockpit over a form of text message
relayed through the satellite.

Inmarsat was set up in 1979 by the
International Maritime Organisation to help ships stay in touch with
shore or call for emergency no matter where they were, has provided key
satellite data about the last movements of MH370.

Even as the plane went off Malaysian air traffic control's radar on 8 March, Inmarsat's satellites were "pinging" it.

A
team at the company began working on the directions the plane could
have gone in, based on the responses. One pointed north; the other,
south. But it took three days for the data to be officially passed on to
the Malaysian authorities; apparently to prevent any more such delays,
Inmarsat was officially made "technical adviser" to the AAIB in its
investigation into MH370's disappearance.

Inmarsat's control room
in London, like some of its other 60 locations worldwide, looks like a
miniature version of Nasa: a huge screen displays the positions of its
11 geostationary satellites, and dozens of monitors control and correct
their positions. A press on a key can cause the puff of a rocket on a
communications satellite 22,236 miles away, nudging its orbit by a few
inches this way or that.

More prosaically, Inmarsat's systems
enable passengers to make calls from their seats and also to use Wi-Fi
and connect to the internet while flying.

If the plane has its own
"picocell" essentially a tiny mobile phone tower set up inside the
plane then that can be linked to the satellite communications system and
enable passengers to use their own mobile phones to make calls, which
are routed through the satellite and back to earth.

After its
creation, Inmarsat's maritime role rapidly expanded to providing
connectivity for airlines, the media, oil and gas companies, mining and
construction in remote areas, and governments.

Privatised at the
end of the 1990s, it was floated on the stock market in 2004, and now
focuses on providing services to four main areas: maritime, enterprise
(focused on businesses including aviation), civil and military work for
the US government, and civil and military work for other governments.
The US is the largest government client, generating up to a fifth of its
revenues of about £1bn annually. The firm employs about 1,600 staff.

- Charles Arthur, technology editor The Guardian

This graphic from The Telegraph indicates the suspected flight
path of MH370 and the location of the past week's debris sightings and
searches: